Not like you could build one without an entire civilization.

Accelerometers and other environmental sensors are _way_ under-utilized in laptops.

Your laptop ought to be able to tell you your velocity, direction of movement, impact forces on itself, temperatures and trends both of internal components and the external environment, elevation, 1st, 2nd and third order derivatives of any of these, strength type and locations of environmental electromagnetic, electrostatic and rf-gamma radiation strengths an variations, audio including multiple active filtering types….

And they should be tough enough for the real world–if I drop my machine into the puddle of salty slush getting out of the way of a bus in Winnepeg, when I retrieve it, it should be able to be wiped off, and tell me the weight of the bus it’s direction of movement, velocity, the impact information from hitting the road, the salinity and temperature of the slush….

A machine which can’t stand heat, cold, wet, impacts onto concrete from 10′ in the air, sliding off a cartop at 20mph without dying, isn’t a “real world” machine.

Most of this can be accomplished by doing away with rigid case machines with assembled parts, and replacing it with circuits printed on flexible substrate then embedded into a silicone gel-type material, now that TFT/LED screens are feasible, there really is no need for rigid machines.

jmf